• DOI:10.1103/PHYSREVE.85.061702
• Corpus ID: 29991485

Multistability in planar liquid crystal wells.

@article{Luo2012MultistabilityIP,
  title={Multistability in planar liquid crystal wells.},
  author={Chong Luo and Apala Majumdar and Radek Erban},
  journal={Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics},
  year={2012},
  volume={85 6 Pt 1},
  pages={
          061702
        }
}

• C. Luo, A. Majumdar, R. Erban
• Published 8 June 2012
• Physics
• Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics

A planar bistable liquid crystal device, reported in Tsakonas et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 111913 (2007)], is modeled within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. This planar device consists of an array of square micrometer-sized wells. We obtain six different classes of equilibrium profiles and these profiles are classified as diagonal or rotated solutions. In the strong anchoring case, we propose a Dirichlet boundary condition that mimics the experimentally imposed tangent boundary conditions. In the weak anchoring case, we present a suitable surface energy and study the multiplicity of solutions as a function of the anchoring strength. We find that diagonal solutions exist for all values of the anchoring strength W ≥ 0, while rotated solutions only exist for W ≥ W_{c}>0, where W_{c} is a critical anchoring strength that has been computed numerically. We propose a dynamic model for the switching mechanisms based on only dielectric effects. For sufficiently strong external electric fields, we numerically demonstrate diagonal-to-rotated and rotated-to-diagonal switching by allowing for variable anchoring strength across the domain boundary.